My colleague Ryan last week expressed concern that Apple’s upcoming HomePod Touch device might be making the same mistake as the original speaker.

But while I do suspect it may be something of a slow burn, I think the device will eventually achieve a much larger market even at the same price …

Apple is hosting a Christmas tree drawing competition, inviting iPad users to submit their creations for the opportunity to have it projected onto an iconic London building. It follows the projection of drawings created by David Hockney, which were displayed on the building in 2023.

The company says 24 winning submissions will be projected onto Battersea Power Station, home to its UK headquarters, alongside commissions from notable figures like Stephen Fry …

A cybersecurity firm says it has strong evidence that hackers are infiltrating freight companies in a bid to intercept cargo shipments arriving at US ports and steal them before they even reach stores. Given the high value of Apple shipments, these seem likely to be among the key targets …

I said only recently that it’s getting harder and harder to believe Apple can deliver on the new Siri. The company’s backtracking on announcements coupled to very vague statements on revised timings were certainly not making it easy to imagine that the new intelligent assistant will deliver.

I’m not yet ready to do my own U-turn on this, and my skepticism still very much remains, but there have at least been a couple of encouraging signs in the last few days …

The Aura Ink is not your typical digital photo frame, and on the basis of the specs alone it doesn’t sound too impressive. That’s because it’s a color e-ink display, with all the drawbacks that entails.

It can display only four different colors – white, yellow, red, and blue – takes around 30 seconds to change from one photo to the next, and is expensive at $499 for a 13.3-inch model. And yet, despite all this, it’s actually the best digital photo frame I’ve ever used …

Your live WhatsApp messages and backups are both protected by end-to-end encryption, but so far you’ve only had the option of using a passkey to access your messages. Accessing backups required a password instead.

That’s all changing now as the company is in the process of rolling out passkey support for backups …

Today isn’t a great day for users of Meta apps. Mark Zuckerberg has told us to expect a “huge corpus” of AI content in Facebook and Instagram, while the company’s CFO Susan Li has said that ads in Threads are now running globally and that video ads are on the way …

Security-conscious readers probably already use the data breach alert site Have I Been Pwned, but a new Proton website is aiming to alert you at an earlier stage with what the company says will be near real-time reporting.

The company behind ProtonMail says it has launched the Data Breach Observatory because it can sometimes take too long to find out when your personal data has been made available for sale on the dark web …

Apple and/or its customers were facing billions of dollars a year in additional costs after increases to US tariffs on Chinese imports imposed by the Trump administration earlier this year. The company had initially absorbed these costs, but it was unclear how long that might last, with future price rises seeming likely.

There’s some good news today, however, with Trump halving the additional tariffs imposed after meeting with China’s President Xi. Additional tariff increases that were scheduled to come into effect shortly have also been suspended …

The AI writing aid Grammarly is changing its name to Superhuman (not to be confused with SimpleHuman) as it gains additional capabilities. The company says existing subscribers will get the extra features at no extra cost, but only until the beginning of February …

A new report by a corporate watchdog says that Apple spent €7M ($8.1M) lobbying the EU in the past year, making it the joint second-largest spender in the tech sector. It says tech giants now spend more on EU lobbying than Big Pharma and the automotive industries combined.

It also reveals that Apple held a total of 76 meetings with Members of the European Parliament and high-level European Commission staff …

A mother with court-ordered custody of her children has described how Apple’s Family Sharing feature can be weaponized by a former partner.

Apple support staff were unable to assist her when she reported her former partner using the service in controlling and coercive ways …

A bipartisan bill could lead to teams being banned from using AI chatbots, in response to parents expressing concerns about inappropriate content ranging from sexual conversations to assistance with suicide planning.

If the proposed GUARD Act becomes law, then it could impact Apple in three different ways – including the company’s plans for the new Siri …

One of the key compromises with the iPhone Air is a smaller battery, but a combination of real-life usage and lab tests suggests that it will get you through a typical day.

In one lab stress test, for example, where the phone is used with the screen on maximum brightness for three hours of video streaming, the iPhone Air dropped 15% of battery life – which is the same as the iPhone 15 …

A new report says that Apple is expecting to announce annual Service revenues of well over $100 billion during its earnings report later this week.

If accurate, that would make the company’s Services division a bigger business than either Walt Disney or Tesla …